Spinning Plates
Cora Thornton-Silver
My pupils turned into spinning plates
Scum looked like jewels
Rats became Parrots
Dirty laundry became soft china silk
I lay in the dirt pile
Feeling nothing but the warm protected sensation of Caribbean sand
The grains of sand turned to fire ants
The soft china silk transformed into a million maggots
The parrot’s beaks shriveled
Their feathers fell away
Red, blue, yellow turned brown
The rat crawled into my ear
The diamond necklace around my neck moved and shifted
I felt the millions of legs tickling me and
Inching into my hair
Then came the snakes
Slithering up my thigh
Wrapping me in a straight jacket
The spinning plates in my eyes cracked
Blood poured out and
Trickled into the cracks of the pavement
No one around
The sky went black
The sun went out
For there was no one to illuminate anymore
